I was thinking of a post basically on Raiding and raiders, or rather why a raider wants to raid, and why raiding guilds fall apart over summer when their members can't raid, coupled with a comment on Anna's site I realised that I went from the truly casual to a fairly hardcore raider, and yes when I was guildless for less than a week I got bored not being able to raid. I know it from my perspective, and its different to many others, what I call casual still wasn't really casual, I was still top dps in instances or tanking stuff when I was online, I suppose my definition of casual is more "experienced gamer playing for a short time each week".

This got me thinking, what are we, why are we, what does this mean and how do we relate to each other. One of the guys in my guild (a non-raider atm due to gear level) was surprised when I offered to run people through Stockades because I seem like a hardcore raider, so doing stuff like that isn't really in the mandate.

So I think there are really three types of players, the casual, the players and the raiders, and I thought it would be interesting to hear what people think they are, what they were and how they got to be what they are and what they think of the other groups.

My thought is that the c-word should be banned from all discussion of MMORPG's.

The purpose of a word is to convey meaning from the speaker/writer to the listener/reader. When I say "dog", you may not know whether I'm talking about a small yapper or a giant St. Bernard, but you know not to expect wings and fire breath. By contrast, as you point out, the word "casual" in MMORPG discussion generally means completely different things to different people (and sometimes different things to the same person, depending on which side of a given argument they come down on). Now sure, you can take the time to define that you're talking about players who are only online 3 hours per week versus players who are online 10-20 hours a week but can't commit to a schedule versus players who (in your opinion) suck, etc. By that point you might as well have said what you meant instead of using a term that no longer has a fixed meaning and then having to define it.

Some people only play once or twice a week but when they do they want to raid, others play a similar amount but wouldn't dream of going near a ten man, let alone a proper raid instance.

On the other hand, there are people who play several hours a day, several days a week, yet for whatever reason don't raid. Imo they are still hardcore players, likely to be just as obsessed with the game as hardcore raiders, only with different aspects of it.

Somewhere PvPers and non-PvPers have to slot in there, and you end up with harcore PvP players, casual PvPers who are hardcore raiders, and any number of combinations.

Could we split it down the middle between those of us with a borderline unhealthy obsession with the game, and those of us who play a bit now and then but don't spend the rest of their week talking / thinking / writing about wow ?

"Hi, my name is Zupa, and I'm a wowaholic. It has been 13 hours since my last raid. It has been 1 week since my last upgrade, and one day since my last respec."

I'd like to think that everything I write about in some way reflects the way I try to balance my life and my WoW.

And sometimes how I fail at at. What? Why is the server giving me a warning? Is it server shutdown already?? *glances out window, sees sunrise* err .... hrm. Another all-nighter.

But in terms of casual vs. harcore, I asked my guild what they al thought they were, casual or hardcore or softcore or Molten Core or maybe just gooey nougat centre. Based on their responses as to what they thought they were, and what they thought the benefit to the guild was of the "hardcore" players, the officers and I came up with a new rank in our guild.

We calle it "Dedicated" (cause hardcore sounded too, well, hardcore >.>) and we give those folks who are Dedicated raiders some nice little perks and privledges. We put in the theme of keeping with the earnable titles that WoW already has and asked our guildies to earn their guild title.

It worked remarkably well and really boosted attendance, as well as showed that when a single mom with eleventy billion kids and nine jobs can still make a difference in the guild, that maybe some of the folks who were dragging their feet and being apathetic about raids could step it up a bit.

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